Roger Hanney
This summer’s enviro-political drama has just geared up from regional discomfort to international powder keg. In mid-January, the Australian Federal Court ruled that whaling by Japanese company Kyodo Senpaku Kaisha Ltd in the Australian Whale Sanctuary – including disputed waters off Antarctica – is illegal and must stop immediately.
Humane Society International, represented in court by Senior Counsel Stephen Gageler, Barrister Chris McGrath and the Environmental Defenders Office, had been fighting to achieve this outcome for close to 4 years. Since 2005 the possibility of such a result had been blocked by federal Attorney-General Ruddock. He had deemed smooth relations with Japan more valuable than potentially unenforceable court orders.
Newly appointed Attorney-General Robert McLelland removed this administrative distortion late last year, thereby giving Justice Allsop the discretion necessary to issue an injunction. It remains to be seen how the federal government will enforce this court order.
Nicola Beynon, HSI Wildlife and Habitat Program Manager said that “the Australian Government has a ship, the Oceanic Viking, on its way to the hunting grounds so they will be well placed to enforce any injunction the court issues.”
In one sense, the outcome vindicates a federal ‘softly, softly’ approach which many activists have, until now, viewed as falling somewhere between apathy and betrayal. It may also have caught the new Australian government by surprise.
Japan’s whaling fleet is currently scattered in Antarctic waters, pursued by the Greenpeace ship Esperanza and Sea Shepherd’s Steve Irwin, formerly the Robert Hunter.
While diplomatic pressure from Australia and the US forced Japan to abandon plans to target humpbacks for the first time in years, Greens Senator Rachel Siewert feels that the real coup belonged to Japan. Siewert says the whalers were always planning to postpone their humpback take.
“After talking up their response the new Labor Government has done little more than the previous Howard government to tackle the whale slaughter,” she said.
To emphasize this fact, deep ocean activists Sea Shepherd recently appointed former Howard environment minister Ian Campbell to their international advisory board. Shepherd captain Paul Watson said: “I believe he did as much as he was able to do to convince the Howard government to oppose Japanese whaling and he did more than the current government of Kevin Rudd is doing.”
In May last year, the Rudd/Garrett partnership promised firm action to curtail whaling. Measures included the use of international courts and tribunals, the enforcement of Australian bans on whaling within Australian waters and the use of Australian naval vessels to monitor and intercept whaling vessels deemed to be operating illegally.
An even more strongly worded press release from Environment Minister Garrett has since been removed from his homepage. What seemed a firm commitment to action deteriorated into a symbolically weak – though diplomatically crafty – deployment of the contracted customs vessel Oceanic Viking to shadow the whaling fleet for up to 20 days, with the possibility of additional air surveillance.
The injunction newly enabled by McLelland and obtained by HSI now seems to compel much stronger action, but the vessel under government orders is still the ship furthest from the Japanese fleet while Environment Minister Garrett continues to talk up a reconnaissance role.
Unlike NGOs that have already been actively in pursuit for the last month, the government vessel may still be diplomatically restricted to a monitoring role. This is frustrating all groups concerned to see commitments honoured and animals saved.
If these vessels do gather evidence to be used in legal proceedings against Japan – another Rudd/Garrett commitment – then hundreds of whales slaughtered now may prevent thousands of deaths in future.
But what evidence remains to be gathered is a mystery. From the whaler’s own records, HSI demonstrated that more than 1200 whales have illegally been killed in Australian waters over the last decade, while more than half of the whales killed in last year’s slaughter were pregnant at the time of death.
Japan is yet to issue a response to the new ruling. Meanwhile, the hunt continues.
